Around the coldest January corner in Williamsburg nests Glasslands, a barn full of glitter and darkwave music. On January 26th, 2010,  local arts impresario Todd Pendu brought DJs from Chicago and two local bands, Omega Jarden and Mirror Mirror, to Glasslands.

On this evening, the stage at Glasslands looked like the underside of a prom dress, or like a snug womb, depending on your life outlook. Ladies with cokebottle glasses boogied and waify boys sashayed across basslines played by DJ Harrison as the party warmed up.

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ORIGINALITY CORNER

Photo by Ben Gallardo

If my father listened to Mirror Mirror, he’d probably just say, “this sounds like Pink Floyd.” Indeed, the phaser passing through the overdubbed vocals on Mirror Mirror’s “New Horizons” seems at first listen to be a convenient reference to the early psychedelic era (Floyd’s soundtrack to the film More, in particular the track “Cirrus Minor,” sounds very MM). Yet, MM’s live show politics and aesthetic destination couldn’t be further from Floyd’s.

In an interview last April with Brooklyn artist Paul Sepuya, MM’s David Riley and Ryan Lucero said that their live shows obscure boundaries between audience and performer, and sometimes it isn’t clear who is performing. I’ve never been to a MM show, but a brief tour of their photo galleries display plays of human sacrifice, séances, and mind erasure, all bent towards provoking audience interaction. On the other hand, Pink Floyd felt they were building a wall between themselves and their listeners.

I don’t know where New York is headed, but somehow it has reached an age where I desire to be theatrically slain on a Friday night.
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